


we all go the same way home

by eleanor_lavish



Category: Bourne Legacy (2012), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Family, Family Secrets, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 20:13:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleanor_lavish/pseuds/eleanor_lavish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Aaron Cross gets a message from his past, he's not prepared for what it means for his future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we all go the same way home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greenet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenet/gifts).



_It’s not been Nick Fury’s best day. Widow is picking up Banner, Coulson is talking Stark into being a goddamn team player, and one of his best agents was taken over by some weird alien mind control stick and then shot him in the fucking chest. The tesseract is gone. His main research wing is a hole in the ground in the New Mexico desert. When Maria Hill arrives at his door with a folder and a grim look on her face, he assumes the worst._

_“Is he - “ he starts, but he can’t quite finish it. Clint Barton is a tough son of a bitch, and Nick can’t quite fathom him gone from the world._

_“That’s just it, sir,” Hill replies, her brow furrowed just enough to make him sit up. “Facial scanners picked this up fifteen minutes ago, but something isn’t right.”_

_The folder is empty save for two blurry photographs, one from the side, and one dead on the face of a bearded man in cutoff khakis and a t-shirt, tying a boat to a dock. Nick stares for a long moment before glancing up at Hill, standing at attention in front of his desk. “This isn’t Barton,” he says, even though the man in the photograph could be Clint, if Clint had bronzed skin and bleached hair from a life in the sun, if Clint could stand having a beard for more than three days at a time. There was something off about this Clint, about the set of the crinkles around his eyes, the way his head was tilted to the wrong side._

_“No sir, we don’t think so,” Hill said._

_“IMF?” Nick asks, because those crazies were all about stealing people’s faces._

_“That was my first thought too, but this guy is apparently an ex-pat named Aaron Fields. He’s been living in Vanuatu for half a decade, taking tourists on adventure trips, but we can’t find any background on him.”_

_“Why hasn’t he come up in our scans before?”_

_“Because we’ve never done this kind of worldwide scan for Barton, sir, and he’s never gone missing in the South Pacific,” Hill notes with a wry twist of her lips. “He tends to only get his ass handed to him in Eastern Europe.”_

_Nick snorts. “True enough. Well, if we’re sure it’s not Barton, ignore it for now and keep scanning. Try focusing on Europe - patterns are patterns for a reason,” he notes with a smile._

_“What about this guy,” Hill asks. “Fields?”_

_“Leave this with me.”_

*

“Sir, sir!” Analyn calls to him as he sits on his stoop with a cup of coffee. She’s come from the village school, still in her white cotton top and long blue skirt. “A message, sir!”

Aaron Fields is still a stranger on this island that can trace it’s generations back for centuries. He’ll be a “sir” forever, no matter how many times he tries to get the kids to call him Aaron. He smiles as the little girl of nine comes to a quick stop mere inches from his knees. Aaron takes a nonchalant sip of his coffee. She rolls her eyes - trying to make Aaron flinch is Analyn’s favorite game - she’s only managed it twice, but Aaron thinks the challenge makes it sweeter.

“Message from who, short stuff?” he asks. It’s hitting the peak of the summer tourist season, but Aaron hasn’t made any concrete plans for deep sea fishing, or reef dives. He’s still living high off his winter runs, though high living these days means he can afford his coffee and some M&Ms when he takes his boat up to Port-Vila to buy staples. Maybe it’s a potential client; the kids from Portland last year said they would forward his contact info to some classmates.

“Says it’s a friend, sir,” Ana replies, handing him the note on a plain white sheet of paper. 

_Message for: Aaron Fields, Erromango, Vanuatu_

_Aaron, I know it’s a long shot, but I’ll be in Madripoor on the 15th and would love to catch up on old times!_

Underneath is the address of a hotel in Madripoor. At the bottom, the signature makes Aaron’s blood run cold:

_Your old friend, Ken Kitsome_

It’s in Jonah’s shaky handwriting, transcribed at the tower station a few miles down the road by Ana’s aging Uncle as he monitors incoming radio transmissions from the capital and beyond. If Analyn brought it straight from school, it means that it was sent no more than 20 minutes ago. Even if they’re traveling by helicopter, Aaron might still have time. 

“Maybe you’ll have a nice visit, eh?” Aaron doesn’t let the dread pooling in his stomach show on his face as he gets up slowly and heads into his three-room house.

“Maybe so, Ana-banana,” he says, making her laugh as she follows him inside. “Why don’t you run home and tell Jonah I’ll see him for tomorrow’s match?” They could be here already, they could be watching him, watching Analyn. “Take this with you, and for your mama,” he tells her, handing her a bag of M&Ms and the tin of sugar he keeps in his tiny kitchen. His go-bag doesn’t have room for small comforts. Analyn gives him a shout of joy and a quick hug, and she’s out the door and skipping back toward the safety of town. Aaron exhales slowly.

*

He puts his go-bag next to the door. He doesn’t leave. 

It’s been six years since Aaron set up shop on this island paradise off the coast of nowhere - eight since he’s been on the run from from Outcome, and the CIA, and Eric Byer. He thought they’d stopped looking, thought he finally found some fucking peace, but the kind of training Outcome puts you through never really leaves you and Aaron can feel now that he’s being watched. It’s not a person - anyone new on the island would be news, and Aaron hasn’t heard any. He starts checking for cameras and finds a new one on the roof of the local bank, and another outside the gate of a new housing development. As he walks past, one of them turns to follow him, its black eye unblinking as he crosses the street.

He wishes that Marta were still around; he’s also insanely glad she’s not. She was right to want to break away from him - they were both wanted, and together they were one giant target. 

They lasted two good years, though Aaron wouldn’t have called them that at the time. They moved around the Islands until they managed to get up to Vietnam, then overland through Cambodia, Burma, Laos. Aaron picked up languages; Marta picked up an aversion to tropical insects. Marta learned to shoot. Aaron hunted game with traps he made himself. They stayed clear of large cities. Marta dyed her hair blond and his a dark red. She yearned for civilization, but twitched in tight spaces. She explained her work to him in painful detail, trying to commit it to her own memory as well as his. When they made it to Calcutta, they rejoiced by spending three weeks in bed before Aaron spotted a military-grade earpiece on a woman in the market. They couldn’t take the chance. They left the next morning, skirting north along the border, Marta’s hair covered by a green and gold scarf.

*

After a year, Marta wanted to keep moving West; she missed cappuccinos and art museums and arguing about genomics over plates of tapas. Aaron wanted to head back East to the islands they had toured for their first six months, gloriously off the radar, where Aaron had learned to patch boats and catch winds in dead water, and impressed the locals with his lung capacity on deep dives. 

The next six months between Aaron and Marta were a tug of war. The six after that were spent planning a new future for Marta separate from Aaron - she settled on South Africa, where employers would overlook possible holes in her background for her medical knowledge and she could start her research anew, and finally publish though not as Marta Shearing. He downloads her research now, printing it out and reading it on his boat, running his finger over the name _Dr. Suzanne Perkins_ and smiling. Her face is softer now, her nose different - just the one she picked out in an unnamed clinic in Dubai. 

“Aren’t you going to do it too?” she’d asked. It’s easier to talk to each other, now that the decision is made to be apart. “A new nose? A new chin?”

He didn’t know how to tell her that his face was the only thing he has that’s always been his, that had never changed over his lifetime. His name is long gone, buried with whatever stood in for Kenny Kitsome’s body. The strength in his hands, his keen hearing, even the sharpness of his thoughts are things that he wasn’t born with, but things he’s had to get used to over the years. They’re part of him now, but he still can’t bring himself to erase his _face_. He worries that without it, he truly won’t know who he is when he looks in the mirror.

He doesn’t say any of this to her, of course. She’s the one who gave him so many gifts, and he doesn’t want to sound ungrateful. 

Looking at her now, he can see that her eyes are still sharp, and her smile is happy. Her new research focuses on the role of genomes in infectious diseases; she’s already won an award. 

He collected the papers and burned them before he left his small house. He has no other physical ties to Marta Shearing, or Suzanne Perkins. He hopes this will be enough, if whoever sent the message is there now, combing through the mementos of his quiet life. He knows he’ll never give her up if they find him. He never told her where he was going, in case they found her first.

*

Madripoor isn’t Aaron’s favorite place - it reminds him strongly of the Philippines, with a dash of Hong Kong at its bustling coast. He’s avoided it - the country is a chess piece in a game Aaron doesn’t want to play, with players he doesn’t want to encounter. As he walks into the hotel, he’s not sure why he’s here. There were no attacks on his home, no silent killers at his doorstep. 

It’s been nearly a week since the message arrived, but nothing happened. In the beginning, it would have been enough to send Aaron and Marta running to the next town, hands twined together on a city bus, moving at night through dense underbrush. But Aaron’s been in Erromango for a long time - he’s friends with the old men who play chess on the beach each night, he dated the daughter of the local laundress until she moved to the capital, he’s owed some money by the kids who use his boat for fishing in the slow season (though he never remembers to collect). It’s home like nothing Aaron’s ever felt before and he doesn’t want to leave it.

It didn’t seem like the CIA to give him any warning that they’d found him, or days to come up with a counter-strategy. Aaron had considered it, weighing his options of heading across the Pacific to South America, north through China and over into Alaska, southwest to the northern rainforests of Australia. But _someone_ had found him, even out in Erromango, and they’d find him again. The longer he thinks about it, the more the message seems like an invitation, and less like a taunt. Friend or enemy, it’s better to know, he thinks, as he walks into the hotel lobby.

*

He asks at the desk for Kenneth Kitsome’s room; it’s hard to say his old name without flashes of a life he spent pulled under by his own mind. They hand him a room key. The young woman at the desk smiles at his confusion. “Mr. Kitsome is away,” she says, not knowing how right she is. “He says to wait for him upstairs, seventeenth floor.”

The room has a large wall of windows; the drop to the street below is a harrowing seventeen stories. He has an emergency parachute in his go-bag, but it wouldn’t exactly be an inconspicuous exit. He thinks maybe it won’t be that bad, maybe it’s all a misunderstanding, but he catches a creak coming from above him and behind a few feet. 

He hasn’t fired his gun in seven months, and then just to make sure it still worked. He didn’t miss it. But his body remembers its training, and the shadowed figure dropping from the ceiling has to flip sideways out of the line of fire. Aaron’s heartrate is slowing down, the calm of his training settling over him like a familiar blanket. They’re here, they’ve come for him, but he’s not going down without a fight.

*

The woman who dropped from the ceiling is nearly supernatural in her ability to evade him. Her red curls swirl around her face as she levels a roundkick that almost makes contact. He wonders if she’s part of a new Outcome, and if they’ve made the drugs even better. Standoffs only really happen when two people are evenly matched. Aaron hasn’t met an equal in a fight since Manila, and he’s thrown off-guard by this one, hunched in a safe spot behind the a brown leather couch. He hasn’t gotten any hits in, but neither has she. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s like she’s waiting for... something. For something from him. 

“What the fuck do you want with me?” he asks in frustration. “I was just living my goddamned life!”

It sounds stupid and childish, and Aaron cringes. 

“Is it really your life you were living, Mr. Fields?” asks a deep, rich voice from the vicinity of the doorway and _shit_. Aaron was so focused on the woman that he didn’t even hear the door open. The man sighs. “Natasha, if you’re here, can I assume Barton is hanging around somewhere?”

“He’s tied up in my room, sir,” the woman - Natasha - replies, and the man sighs again. 

“He’s tied up in your - “

“To keep him from going rogue on this one, sir,” she cuts in.

“Since I do not remember briefing either one of you on this mission, why should I not assume you are _both_ rogue on this one, Agent?” The guy sounds more exasperated than angry. “And how in the _hell_ did you find out about this, anyway?”

“Barton was going to come regardless, sir, so I figured my best case was to come with him, and incapacitate him as necessary to do some recon. And Stark told Clint and me about the Fields file - he figured Clint would want to know. That chip he used to scan the helicarrier was really something.” 

“God damn it - the intel Stark got the day of the attack is old, Agent. Way old.”

“We have new information?” she asks.

“A good deal more, yes,” the man nearly growls. “You people can’t make anything easy can you? God save me from spies, billionaires and do-gooders. Always rushing in without all the information.”

Aaron glances around the couch and sees a tall black man in a dark sweater standing with his hands on his hips, his eyes on the ceiling in frustration. Or, eye. On the other, he wears a leather eyepatch. He doesn’t look like a guy Aaron would want to piss off. Aaron wonders if they even remember he’s here. As if on cue, the man’s voice cuts across the room:

“Mr. Fields, I am sorry about this - my associate was not fully briefed on the situation as she was _not supposed to be here_.”

“Well,” Aaron says as calmly as he can muster, “that makes two of us, as I was actually supposed to be sitting on my boat with a beer right now. Sir,” he adds for effect. 

The man snorts. “Great, there’s actually two of them,” he says cryptically. “Get out here son - no one is going to shoot you today, and I have some intel that might interest you.” Aaron doesn’t really have a choice, save for his seventeen story parachute plan. He figures that can be a back-up as needed. Right now, what he really needs is answers.

Aaron stands slowly, taking in the two figures in black across the room. The redhead watches him intently. The man puts out one gloved hand for Aaron to shake. “Mr. Fields, or is it Cross? Kitsome? Whatever you’re going by these days, I’m Nick Fury, Director of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division, and I think you’ll want to hear me out.”

*

“What the hell the odds are of someone ending up in _two_ secret government studies is beyond me, but you’ve managed it,” Fury says, sliding a slim manila folder across the coffee table to Aaron. The woman is standing by the door with her arms crossed.

“He should be here.”

“He _should_ be in New York, Natasha. So he can just wait a damn minute until we’re done here, and I’ll read him in once Mr. Kitsome is on board.”

“Who should be here, sir?” Aaron asks but he’s distracted by the paper in his hand. It’s a typewritten account with “CLASSIFIED” across the top that details one “Subject B” and his fine motor skills, his IQ tests, results of blood tests. It looks like any file for a potential government agent, except Subject B appears to be a child. A child with Kenneth Kitsome’s birthday. When the Subject is four, the report states that he is “physically matched with his peers, but struggles with basic mental tasks.” When he’s eleven, the report states that “Subject B’s caretakers have chosen to place him in state care - further observation will continue until age of maturity.” He remembers the day he moved in, his mom telling him it was just like camp, his father not looking at him at all. In 1988, when Kenny Kitsome had been dreaming of the prom and unable to understand why he wasn’t ever going to get a date, the report reads “As with his more mentally agile co-Subjects, Subject B similarly shows no signs of genomic change - PROJECT TRIUMVIRATE TERMINATED.”

“Is this - “ he starts, but he knows the answer. “This is me.”

“Yes it is,” Fury answers plainly.

“They were looking for ‘genetic change’ - is that - “

“Mutants. It was the early seventies, and the government had very little information about who manifests as a mutant and why, and very few scruples about finding out.”

“But I’m not a mutant,” Aaron says, though he’s often wondered how Marta’s mutated genes would show up on tests if he ever tried to go home. Would he end up on a mutant registry, if those ever got passed? How much of him was no longer human?

“Well, that’s debatable, based on the kind of testing we do now, but no, you certainly weren’t the kind of mutant the government was looking for twenty years ago. What they were trying to do was study how some people became mutants, and others didn’t. The old nature-versus-nurture experiment. You threw them a curveball - you were deprived of oxygen for a little while during childbirth which caused some... challenges.”

“So why not just drop me from the study?” he asks. Aaron’s skin is prickling - he’d sometimes dreamed about the simple life he would have led as Ken Kitsome, the ease of knowing no one was ever looking at him, but now he’s discovered that he’s never truly not been under a microscope. That the last six years, living on an island as someone who never existed were the only truly free moments of his entire fucking life.

“You were special,” Fury replies. “You had something that the government couldn’t recreate.” As if on cue, an air conditioning duct falls to the floor and a man drops from the ceiling and aims a goddamned _arrow_ at Aaron’s head. Aaron is frozen in place, eyes wide. His heart hasn’t beat this fast in years. The man with the bow is... _him_. Same blue eyes, same flat nose, same sandy hair. 

“Who the fuck are you and why do you have my fucking face?” the man growls at him.

“I - I think that’s my line,” Aaron manages, still unblinking. His mind is racing a mile a minute: _Clones? Could the government have been that technologically advanced even then? Or were they both part of some experiment in facial reconstruction? Did Outcome strip away his sense of self on top of everything else? Or was it some IMF bullshit - was this guy with the bow only pretending to be outraged about Aaron stealing his face and underneath he looks like someone else?_

“You’re thinking too hard,” Fury says calmly, like the guy with the bow didn’t even phase him. “Barton, put that down.”

“Sir - “

“Put it DOWN. You people have GOT to start trusting me.” Both the man with the bow - Barton - and Natasha snort. Fury huffs at them.

Aaron was barely listening though. He was looking from Fury to the man across from him and back to the folder on the table. “Nature-versus-nurture,” he says, and Fury actually smiles at him. 

“Now you’re getting it.”

“They were looking for people who were _predisposed_ to be mutants.”

“What?” Barton says sharply, but Aaron can see that he’s paying attention. Natasha is too, her head tilted gently to one side.

“The government, they wanted to know who would become a mutant. But they had to start with people who would be naturally predisposed and then - “

“Then place them in different environments to see how the mutations would manifest.” Fury finishes. “Take babies from mutant mothers and place them in specially selected environments. Good families, bad families - stress ‘em out, push some one way, pull some the other.”

“I was a challenge,” Aaron repeats. “I wasn’t supposed to be... broken.”

“No,” Fury confirms. “But you were special.”

“In order for this to work they’d have to start with all the same variables. They’d have to start with - “

“Twins,” Natasha murmurs and Barton’s fingers twitch.

“Not possible,” he says faintly.

“More than possible,” Fury says. “Clint Barton, meet Aaron Fields, formerly Aaron Cross of the CIA, formerly Kenneth Kitsome of the US Army. Also known as your brother.”

Barton lowers the bow slowly and Aaron just watches him. They’re identical but not exactly - Barton has a tiny scar over his left eye, and he’s missing the birthmark Aaron has on the back of his wrist. It was definitely the easiest answer - even school kids learn about twin studies - but it’s almost worse than the clone idea. The one thing Aaron had never had, and always missed, was _family_. The Army gave him that, for a little while, but Outcome stripped it all away. Outcome picked him specifically because he had no one left who gave a damn, no one at home to miss. He’d had Marta for two years, but they were too complicated to be called a family.

But here, standing in front of him, was proof that he has more family than he’d ever dared to dream about. He has a _brother_. Maybe he’s too trusting, too believing, or maybe he’s just been alone too fucking long, but all the pieces make sense in Aaron’s mind, and he _wants_ this to be true, like he’s never wanted anything. Aaron wants to say something profound, something important to mark the occasion, and to wipe the suspicion from Clint’s eyes. All he can manage is, “Hi, it’s... good to meet you.”

“Fuck you, I already have a brother,” Barton replies, and the bow is back up. Aaron can see the tip of the arrow glint against the sunlight in the room. 

“Adoptive, yes,” Fury says, and Barton glares at him. “Barney’s not your real brother, Barton. We didn’t bother with blood tests before, but once this intel came in, I ran it. You’re not related.”

Aaron isn’t sure what the history is between Barton and his brother, but he can see the way Barton pales. Natasha is at his elbow instantly. “Put it down,” she murmurs. “Let’s talk about this.”

“I don’t need another brother,” Barton says. “I didn’t ask for this.”

“Me either,” Aarons says, “and maybe it doesn’t mean anything to you, but. It really is good to meet you.”

“God _damn_ it,” Barton says loudly and flicks his wrist so that his bow clicks shut. “I can’t shoot a guy with my own damn face.”

Aaron smiles. “Well, the beard helps tell us apart at least.”

“Doesn’t it _itch_ , though?” Barton asks, and Aaron smiles wider. 

“You get used to it.”

*

Aaron asks the question Clint obviously won’t. “If we’re adopted, who are we really? Who are our parents?”

Fury sits across from Aaron in a wide armchair, Natasha standing behind him. She’s completely still, but Aaron gets the feeling she’s battle-ready. Clint is perched on the back of the couch, twirling his bow around his fingers. 

Fury recites from memory. “Father unknown. Mother Julie Sanders, from Peyton, Oklahoma.”

“Not my mother,” Clint spits out.

“ _Biological_ mother,” Aaron clarifies. “She was a mutant, right?”

Fury nods. “She was twenty-one when she gave birth to you. She’d managed to stay under the government’s radar until then, but I guess the pain of childbirth cuts into one’s control. The day you were born, there was an earthquake in Oklahoma that registered a 6.9 on the Richter scale.” Fury paused. “In case you didn’t pay attention in geology, Oklahoma’s not supposed to get earthquakes like that.”

Clint looks as impressed as Aaron feels. “Is she still - “

“No,” Fury cuts in. “That’s how this all came about actually. The government had an unofficial ‘capture or kill’ policy on mutants like Julie, who had powers that were perceived as a real threat to the United States. Three people died in that quake - that was enough incentive for them to take her in. They surrounded her house. I think normally she would have just opened the ground and let it swallow them all whole, but she tried to fight them off the old fashioned way, with a shotgun. Probably to avoid accidentally collapsing the house on you in the process. Earthquakes are tricky to control.”

“They killed her,” Aaron says flatly, and Clint rolls his hand into a fist. 

“She was a threat to national security,” Fury says by way of confirmation. “And that’s when they found you, and decided that if they needed to find you new homes, they may as well kill two birds with one stone.”

“Sounds about right,” Clint mutters. “And then when we didn’t become baby mind readers and fire starters -”

“They terminated the study,” Aaron recites from his file.

Clint gets up and paces the room a few times as the rest of them sit in silence. “I’m guessing I pulled the short straw on the nurture placement.”

Aaron shrugs. His family before the group home was always pretty standard, but there was a coldness there, a ribbon of something that made Aaron - Kenny - feel like he never quite belonged. He thought it was because he was different, but maybe it was more than that. “I didn’t exactly end up in a Norman Rockwell painting,” he notes and Clint glares at him.

“You really want to play this game, boy scout?”

“Can you not be an asshole for five fucking minutes?” Aaron snaps. Fury’s eyebrow goes up.

“That’s like asking how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie pop,” Fury says. “The world may never know.”

*

Fury’s gone, off to some meeting with a guy named Daken, and Aaron can’t stop looking at Barton - _Clint_ , his fucking _brother_. They’ve ordered some room service, and Clint and Aaron have both ordered steak, rare, and beers. They’re both left-handed, Aaron notices, and they both shake their leg up and down when they’re nervous. At least Aaron assumes Clint is also nervous. Aaron is terrified. But that might just be Natasha.

She’s sipping a glass of neat vodka across the room, her legs crossed, one elbow resting on her thigh. She’s just _looking_ at Aaron, but it’s enough to make him re-check the exits.

“Tash,” Clint says, like a warning.

“What?” she answers. “We don’t know anything about him.”

“What do you want to know?” Aaron says. “I don’t have any reason to lie to you. Ask away.”

“They dosed you in the CIA. Are you a mutant now?” She asks, and Clint stills next to him, listening.

“I don’t know,” Aaron replies plainly. “Depends on your definition, I guess.”

“Why didn’t S.H.I.E.L.D. know about you before this?”

“I guess that’s a question for Director Fury.”

“Where’s the woman, the one who went on the run with you?”

“I’m not going to tell you that.”

Natasha leans forward. “So, we have two questions you can’t answer, and one you won’t. You’re a real open book, Mr... what should we call you again?”

“Aaron,” he grits out. “And you invited _me_ to this party, let me remind you.”

“Leave it alone, Tasha,” Clint says, his fork tight in his fingers.

“We don’t know his training, we don’t know his loyalties,” she hisses. “We should get proof. Stark can - “

“Fuck Stark,” Clint barks. “We don’t need more proof. Isn’t the fact that he’s sitting here with the same fucking face proof enough, Natasha? We’re not handing him over to Stark. Just cause we’re on the same team right now -”

Aaron blinks at them. “Stark as in - Tony Stark?” Tony Stark as in Iron Man, as in the hero of the Battle of New York, as in The Avengers. “You’re - are you one of the Avengers?” he asks Clint, eyes wide. Vanuatu was on the edge of the world, but it was still IN the world, and Aaron hadn’t missed the news about the Battle, or the subsequent worldwide conversation about the Avengers. 

“Two, actually,” Natasha says with a predatory smile. 

“Right,” Aaron says, leaning back into the cushions. “Okay, then.”

Fury takes that moment to walk back into the room. “Recruiting already?” he asks with a smile. Aaron stares at them all helplessly. They’re _Avengers_.

“What happens next, sir?” Clint asks.

“Well, we can’t just leave him to rot in his island paradise, can we - not with his skill set.”

“Sir - “ Natasha says sharply, but Fury ignores her.

“What do you say, Aaron? Want to have some fun saving the world? I can certainly clean up your little CIA problem.”

“I’m not sure,” Aaron says, but he’s already thinking about it. About how he could possibly go back to Erromango with the knowledge that Clint was out there, battling, drinking beer, having a life that Aaron wasn’t a part of. Aaron wants to know about it. Wants to know _Clint_ , at least enough to know whether he likes the guy or not. “I think... I wouldn’t mind a family vacation,” he says.

Clint blinks at him for a minute before barking out a laugh. “Fuck it, I’ve never had one of those either.” Aaron smiles.

Fury nods and reaches into his briefcase to pull out another slim file. He opens it and spins it so that Aaron and Clint can see - in the folder is a grainy color photograph of a young woman with sandy blond hair and the same nose as Aaron, as Clint. She’s in a sundress leaning over a large crib with a wide smile. In the crib are babies dressed in identical blue onsies. Three of them.

“Good, because there’s another one of you. Let’s go find him.”

**Author's Note:**

> For Greenet, who I can't believe I don't already know (based on DW likes alone). This is part one of a series about found families, and real ones, and the coming together of the two. [Consider this a placeholder for a multitude of thanks to hand-holders and beta readers.]


End file.
